The Criminal on the Cross

It’s Holy Week.

Yesterday in church they read the Passion.  As I was sitting there playing with my palm, trying to turn it into a cross, I thought of something new.  When the criminal on the cross next to Jesus says to him “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” it made me think of how we act in today’s world.

We want it now.  We want to prove how strong we are.  We want to show everyone our power.  We wave around our success and our popularity and our knowledge and our strength and power like a flag.  We are proud people and I don’t mean that in a good way.

We post on Facebook and Twitter and we write blogs that scream “LOOK AT ME!” Aren’t I smart?  Aren’t I pretty?  Aren’t I special?  Obviously I’m guilty of this since I’m the blogger here.  And I was just getting ready to tell you one of my posts was published on a yoga website called Elephant Journal.  Here’s the link:  http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/03/humble-warrior-sue-bidstrup/  I’m super excited.  But it feels a little awkward.  I want people to see it because I want to be a writer and that’s how it works.  People read and share and it goes viral and I’m rich and famous and hanging out at my house on the beach making a reality show of my life.  Just kidding, that sounds awful.  Not to mention really boring.

It’s unfortunate but in this world, I guess “likes” and “shares” matter.  So I post and I share and I like and I keep writing.  And if my writing shows up somewhere else or gets some recognition, I celebrate and toot my own horn.  But just for a minute because immediately I feel kind of icky.  I think that’s what God may have been pointing out to me yesterday…even Jesus didn’t brag or boast or control or strive or grasp…he accepted and he went with God’s plan.  Makes you think.

We want credit and we want praise and we want to show the world how much we have it together.  Can you even imagine being humiliated on a cross?  Can you imagine being wrongly accused and beaten and mocked and murdered?

We can’t even imagine going one day without Starbucks or God forbid the internet is down for a minute.  I’ve heard people say “that’s a first world problem”.  I found a great video about this I want to share.

Sorry, I got off on a little tangent.  I’m not criticizing you, I’m criticizing myself.  I feel like I had a huge reminder in church yesterday.  A reminder about humility and most of all PATIENCE.

My son has been watching The Bible mini-series with me and we love it.  He asked me a most profound question the other day.  He said, “Mom, if God knew he would send Jesus to save us…why did he wait so long?  Why did all those people have to die?”

Hmmm.

It’s moments like this when you realize how little you know and how passing on the faith is no easy task.

Here’s what I believe and I have no business spouting it out but I will anyway because that’s what we do when we have access to the internet.  Here goes:

God loves you so much.  He loves all of us.  He created us beautiful and loving and trusting and then life got in the way.  We started to sin and to look away from God and to think we know all things.  We thought we were in charge.  God saw this and was sad.  He knew we needed a Savior and he wanted to save us because he loves us so much.  So he sent Jesus.  Why he waited so long?  I don’t know.  I have to believe it’s so we learned about ourselves and about God and about the path we don’t want to take that leads to destruction.

It’s like Lent…why does it seem so long and so bleak and so tiring?  (It’s like winter in Chicago…I mean, snow? today? really?)  I believe it’s so we know how truly glorious Easter morning is – so we really, really need and want Jesus to rise again.  So we can rejoice!

Because in Lent and in life, there is no sweet rejoicing without some suffering.  There is no Easter without Good Friday.  There is no mountaintop moment without a climb.  We may want what we want and we may want it now but God has other plans.  We must have patience and trust that His plans are good and that He loves us.

If we do not know that yet, we will.  Because even in Jesus’s toughest moment, he said, “thy will be done”.  And it was.

Amen.

©2013 Sue Bidstrup, Great Big Yes™ All Rights Reserved